Page "science_fiction" Paragraph 79

His mind turned the globe swiftly for him, and he visualized Africa, which used Swahili south of the Sahara Sea.

All around the Mediterranean Sea, Asia Minor, northern India, and Tibet, Hebrew was the native tongue.

In southern Europe, between the Israeli Republics and the Icelandic-speaking peoples of northern Europe, was a thin but long stretch of territory called March.

This was no man's land, disputed by the Haijac Union and the Israeli Republic, a potential source of war for the last two hundred years.

Neither nation would give up their claim on it, yet neither wished to make any move that might lead to a second Apocalyptic War.

So, for all practical purposes, it was an independent nation and by now had its own organized government ( unrecognized outside its own borders ).

Its citizens spoke all of the world's surviving tongues, plus a new one called Lingo, a pidgin whose vocabulary was derived from the other six and whose syntax was so simple it could be contained on half a sheet of paper.